How To Learn Hindi

It is wonderful that you are trying to discover how to learn Hindi.  Hindi is spoken as a first language by about a third of the population of India, and is the second language of millions more people.  Since it is one of the official languages of India, it is used in the official communications of that country.  Consequently, it is taught in schools all over the country, even in portions of India in which Hindi is not spoken as a native language.  So working out how to learn Hindi can put you in touch with millions of people in India alone.

In addition to the millions of people in India who speak Hindi, there are millions who speak Urdu, the national language of Pakistan.  As spoken colloquially, Hindi and Urdu are indistinguishable.  They have the same grammar and much of the same vocabulary.  Poetic or very educated vocabulary may differ between the languages and the alphabets differ between the languages.  These differences are due to different influences on the languages.  Hindi retains its chief influence from Sanskrit, its progenitor.  Its written form, the Devanagari script, is the alphabet of Sanskrit and its poetic language is borrowed from Sanskrit.  On the other hand, Urdu reflects the influence of the Perso-Arabic culture.  It is written in the Perso-Arabic script and its poetic language is adopted from Persian and Arabic.

There is not much common vocabulary between Hindi and English.  Consequently, a native English speaker would not be able to recognize many Hindi words on account of their familiarity with English.  On the other hand, the Hindi language is relatively regular in terms of grammar and spelling.  So hard work will bring rewards to any diligent student of Hindi.  Any English speaker should be encouraged to study Hindi. 

Like many European languages (but unlike English), Hindi nouns have gender.  Nouns referring to boys and men and male animals are masculine.  Nouns referring to girls and women and female animals are feminine.  Nouns referring to inanimate objects are masculine or feminine depending solely on convention.  In Hindi, most adjectives agree with the gender of the noun they modify.  Moreover, verbs agree with the gender of their subject.   

In Hindi, the verb goes last in a sentence.  So a common sentence structure contains a subject, an object and a verb, in that order.  In English, we have prepositions that precede a noun; Hindi uses postpositions that follow a noun.  Adjectives precede nouns.  There are no definite or indefinite articles.

Hindi verbs show both tense and aspect.  The tenses show whether an action is past, present and future.  The aspects show whether an action is habitual, progressive or perfective.

Hindi sentences are punctuated with commas, question marks and exclamation points as in English.  However, the use of the period is not very common.  Instead, Hindi employs a vertical line, or a “full stop,” to indicate the end of the sentence.

If spoken Hindi sounds difficult and written Hindi looks incomprehensible to you now, you should know that Hindi, like any other language, can be learned, spoken and understood.  Find a good online Hindi course, set up a systematic study schedule, and apply yourself diligently, and you will be speaking and reading a language spoken by millions of people in India and elsewhere.  Do it.  The goal of speaking Hindi is definitely worth the work involved in how to learn Hindi.

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It can be hard to figure out how to learn Hindi when your schedule is already full.  Learning a language is labor-intensive.  You can’t delegate it.  You have to do it yourself.  You just have to find a way to spend the time.  And learning Hindi requires learning a new alphabet, too.  Between work, family and other activities, it’s hard to find the time to fit your Hindi studies into your day.  Although learning a language always takes a lot of time and work, there are ways to multi-task.  Here are some tips for how to learn Hindi when you are too busy to learn a language.

Invest in an online Hindi course.  Online self-study courses are a busy person’s dream.  With no class schedules or deadlines, you can work at your own pace when your schedule permits.  You can repeat a class.  You can take the materials with you when you travel.  You can do a class at midnight or 6:00 AM or Sunday afternoon if you want.  The best online Hindi courses accommodate different learning styles, offering audio instruction, written instruction, interactive quizzes, vocabulary-building games and other creative learning techniques.  The very best have “virtual teachers” through a members-only forum.  They are far less expensive than a one-on-one tutor would be, and they are always there for you, whenever your schedule suits it.  For a busy person, an online Hindi course is the best choice for how to learn Hindi.

Down with Lady Gaga; up with Hindi.  Download the audio files from your Hindi course onto your MP3 player.  Do a couple of lessons and some fun stuff, like songs or dialogs.  That way, you can carry the course instruction with you.  When you would otherwise listen to music, listen to your Hindi course instead.  Study your Hindi lessons on the subway, in the laundromat, in the dentist’s waiting room, or anyplace else that you have a couple of minutes to spare. 

Write your shopping list in Hindi.  Do you write a daily list of things to do?  How about a shopping list?  Write it in Hindi.  If you are just beginning, you can write the English word using the Devanagari alphabet.  It’s a good way to practice Hindi writing.  After you have enough vocabulary, you can write the lists in Hindi words.  Practicing your Hindi vocabulary and writing skills while you are doing your daily tasks — now, that’s global multi-tasking.

Turn housework into homework.  Sometimes learning a language simply requires some memorization.  It may be boring and time-consuming, but spending the time to really learn your Hindi lessons pays off.  So fit it in when you have something mindless to do.  Loading the dishwasher?  Practice your verb conjugations.  Mopping the floor?  Quiz yourself on genders.  Vacuuming?  Recite your dialogs to yourself.  Out loud.  No one will hear over the noise the vacuum makes.  Mowing the lawn?  Well, you get the idea.

Sometimes it’s the busiest people who want to learn a language.  It’s people who travel for business or personal reasons.  People who want to succeed in their careers badly enough to do what others can’t be bothered to do.  People who are so intellectually curious that they want to learn everything.  Have no fears.  Busy people can find the time to learn a language, too.  Just be creative and adaptable and you will find the time.  The tips outlined above will help you find how to learn Hindi, even though you are so very, very busy. 

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Learning a language takes a lot of work over a long period of time, and your efforts in how to learn Hindi probably won’t be any different.  You might start your Hindi course with a lot of enthusiasm, but keeping your momentum over time takes work.  Here are some tips for you to keep yourself motivated in your efforts how to learn Hindi.

Start by thinking that you can do it.  You learned English.  And you learned to read and write the Roman alphabet, starting from a time when the letters just looked like marks on a page.  You may speak other languages, too, and you may have learned other alphabets.  Each language that you learned opened doors to communication with people and to learning that would be impossible otherwise.  You can succeed in your Hindi course, too, and have the same reward of unique communication and learning.

Take the “slow but steady” approach.  Don’t try to learn too much in one sitting, or one day, or one week.  Break your learning plan into smaller, easily doable chunks.  Don’t forget to review frequently.  You will accomplish much more lasting learning that way.  And you won’t be overwhelmed by a long stretch of study or a long list of items to master.  The best way how to learn Hindi is to give yourself a regular schedule, including homework.  Plan to study Hindi at a regular time, such as for an hour after dinner.  Then, later, do your self-assigned “homework.”  For example, you could use fifteen minutes of your lunch break the next day to review the new skills you studied the night before.  Look over the grammar and vocabulary lessons that you have already studied, quiz yourself on your verb conjugations or practice your writing skills.

Think outside the classroom box.  One of the best things about studying languages is that you get to read and understand media that you wouldn‘t otherwise.  For example, you will be able to read and understand Hindi newspapers online, or enjoy a Bollywood movie.  Although you need to pay attention to your Hindi course materials, don’t limit yourself to them.  Embrace Hindi language materials online, on screen or by podcast, or in any other way that you can find them.  Seek out Hindi-speaking friends and have conversations with them that you can only have because you are learning their language.  What a great way how to learn Hindi!

Set short-term and intermediate goals.  You have set the admirable long-term goal of completing a Hindi course.  But don’t forget to set shorter-term goals, too.  For one thing, you will meet them faster.  For another thing, you will be able to recognize the accomplishments that you have made, and that will motivate you to work toward the next goal.

Reward yourself for reaching your goals.  Give yourself a treat for reaching all your goals, including the small, short-term ones.  Enjoy a Hindi movie or video, invite your friends over for an Indian meal or take yourself out to an Indian restaurant. 

Of course, the best reward for tackling your Hindi course is that, when you are done, you will be able to speak Hindi.  So, in addition to setting your short-term goals, keep that over-arching goal in mind.  You are working at how to learn Hindi.   What an adventure that is!

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If you are trying to figure out how to learn Hindi phonology, there is little that I can explain to you in a written blog post.  You should refer to your Hindi course materials to listen to the audio files to learn the different sounds.  But there are a few things that you can read about with respect to Hindi phonology.  They will help you in your efforts how to learn Hindi.

As in other languages, the vowels have long and short sounds.  In addition, Hindi vowels can also be nasalized.  A nasalized vowel is indicated by a dot over the letter.

There are two ways of writing each vowel.  The dependent version is the version of the letter used when it follows a consonant.  The independent version of the letter is used when a vowel begins a word or follows another vowel.

In Hindi, consonants can be either aspirated or unaspirated and either dental or retroflex.  For example, the dental “t” sound is pronounced with the tongue touching the roof of the mouth and the back of the teeth.  This is further forward along the palate than the sound is made in English.  The retroflex “t” sound is pronounced with the tongue touching the roof of the mouth farther back on the palate than in English.  An aspirated consonant is pronounced with an audible expulsion of breath.  No breath is heard when an unaspirated consonant is pronounced. 

Learning languages requires careful listening and imitation to vowel and consonant sounds.  Take the time to listen to the audio materials in your Hindi course.  If you are taking a university course, go to the language lab.  If you are taking an online Hindi course, listen to your audio files. 

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The worldwide web has made the world smaller and made the question of how to learn Hindi easier to answer.  There are a lot of resources available on the internet that will make your study of Hindi easier.  If you are creative in finding and using them, it will make your efforts in studying Hindi more fun.  Here are a list of suggestions for how to learn Hindi on the internet.

Find Hindi podcasts and videos.  Do a Google search for podcasts and videos.  Some of the search results will be aimed at teaching Hindi as a second language.  On the other hand, you will also find results that are aimed at people who already have a level of proficiency in Hindi and just want to enjoy the music video or a radio talk show in Hindi.  Look for all of these resources.  If you spend time and attention with them, you will learn Hindi vocabulary, usage and grammar.  Just as importantly, however, you will learn a lot about Indian culture.

Become a Bollywood movie fan.  “Bollywood” refers to the Hindi-language film industry centered in Mumbai.  It is a very active segment of the Indian film industry and there are a lot of Bollywood movies produced yearly.  In the United States, you can get them on DVD or computer download from Netflix and Blockbuster, as well as finding them elsewhere online.  Watching Bollywood movies not only lets you know how to learn Hindi, it also instructs you on current Indian fads and fashions.  Since Bollywood movies are usually musicals, studying the films gives you an entree into studying Hindi language songs.  It can be challenging to understand song lyrics even when you speak the language a little, but learning a song can give you a memory hook for the contents.  Just think of how many people still sing the “ABC Song” to themselves when they alphabetize their files.

Set up a conversation group on Skype.  The best way to learn a language is to speak it.  And that requires you to form a community of Hindi-language speakers.  If you are taking a class in a university or a language school, you already have a Hindi-speaking community.  But if you are studying Hindi by yourself, you need to reach out to find them.  Use Twitter and Facebook to find interested Hindi students, then set up a weekly conversation hour on Skype or a free conference call service, so that you can all chat, make friends all over the world, and practice your Hindi.  

Take an online Hindi course.  Once you have decided to learn Hindi,  what steps can you take to accomplish your goal?  You may be lucky enough to be enrolled in a university with a Hindi program.  Or perhaps you live in a town that has a language school that offers a Hindi course.  Maybe you have found a Hindi tutor for private lessons.  Or maybe not.  Finding a Hindi course is not that easy in most parts of the United States.  A great alternative to a live class is a good online Hindi course.  With an online Hindi course, you will get systematic instruction in vocabulary, grammar and usage.  With the best, you will also get interactive quizzes and games and even a forum for online communication with teachers and other students.  Online courses are also significantly less expensive than other language-learning alternatives.  So an online Hindi course may be a great advantage to you in your efforts how to learn Hindi.

In the age of the internet, we have options for language learning that didn’t exist in the past.  Take advantage of them now.  Go online and you will find a lot of helpful resources for how to learn Hindi.

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You may be trying to discover how to learn Hindi in fun and different ways.  Homework and practice is good and helpful, but maybe you want a change of pace.  Fortunately for all of us, there’s Bollywood!  Watching a Bollywood movie is an adventuresome exercise in how to learn Hindi.

Bollywood refers to the Hindi-language film industry that is centered in Mumbai.  The word is a mix of “Bombay,” as Mumbai was called until 1995, and, of course, “Hollywood.”   The term was first used in the 1970’s, when film production in India was so prolific that it exceeded even the United States.

Bollywood is not to be confused with Tollywood, another term used to describe part of the Indian film industry.  Tollywood is centered in Tollygunge, an area of Kolkata, and produces films in Bengali.  More broadly, Bollywood should not be confused with the Indian film industry taken as a whole, as there are other locations and languages in India in which films are made.

Although Bollywood movies occasionally use some English and some Urdu poetic terms, it is a Hindi-language cinema.  Many Bollywood movies are available on DVD and it is possible to get them through Netflix or Blockbuster.  So almost anyone looking for an original way how to learn Hindi has this resource available.  Does your community have a large Indian or Pakistani population?  An annual film festival?  Or a university with a foreign film program?  If so, you may be able to find Bollywood films on the big screen, at least every once in a while. 

Bollywood films are usually musicals.  Whether a film succeeds at the box office or not can depend on the audience’s reception of the music and dance numbers.  It is typical for a Bollywood movie to use such plot devices as convenient coincidences, the reunification of separated relatives, star-crossed lovers with disapproving parents, love triangles, derring-do, and extreme reversals of fortune.  There are heroes and villains.  There is action, romance, comedy, farce and melodrama.  In fact, Bollywood movies are such a mixture of so many elements that they are sometimes referred to a “masalas,”  the term used to describe the spice mixture that is such a significant element in Indian cooking.  Of course, it takes time for all those musical numbers, plot twists and complicated interpersonal relationships to unfold.  A Bollywood film generally runs three hours and has an intermission. 

As time passes, Bollywood movies are incorporating more Western elements in their plots.  For example, instead of depicting young adults entering into arranged marriages, some films are showing young singles dating and enjoying the nightlife.

Watching Bollywood movies is fun.  One way or another, they should be accessible to most people in the United States.  It’s a great way to hear dialogue spoken rapidly, hear the rhythm of spoken Hindi, get a flavor of the culture and fashions of India and have an entertaining evening all at the same time.  And watching movies, watching television and listening to radio are effective ways to learn any language.  So use Hindi-language films as a resource as you work out your plan for how to learn Hindi.

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One reason to want to know how to learn Hindi is that it is spoken by so many millions of people.  The Indian Constitution sets forth Hindi and English as the two official languages and is one of the 22 languages schedules on the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Consitution.  Hindi is a member of the Indo-Aryan language family.  Some linguists classify Hindi as a dialect continuum rather than a language.  Over 40 percent of Indians speak a Hindi dialect as their native language.  Hindi is spoken mostly in the northern states of India, including Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Haryana. 

Hindi is also spoken outside of India.  Urdu, a language that is mutually intelligible with Hindi in its spoken colloquial form, is the national language of Pakistan.  Standard Hindi and Standard Urdu evolved from the Khari Boli dialect.  Hindi is written in the Devanagari alphabet and borrows some of its literary vocabulary from Sanskrit.  On the other hand, Urdu is written in Perso-Arabic script and borrows some of its vocabulary from Persian.  Hindi and Urdu grammar are identical.  Spoken, colloquial Urdu and Hindi can generally be considered the same language.

A dialect of Hindi is also spoken in Fiji.  Indentured servants who were sent to Fiji from India used Hindi as a lingua franca.  Over time, Hindi evolved with vocabulary and grammar that was adapted to suit the lives of the native Indians living and working in Fiji.  In parts of Fiji in which large numbers of Indians lived, Fijian Hindi, as it is known, came to be spoken by people who were not Indian. 

Of course, Hindi is also spoken in other countries in which native Indians live and continue to speak their mother tongues, even if those countries do not recognize Hindi as a national or official language.  Those countries include the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.

A Hindi dialect is the native language of millions of people.  You are doing well by trying to discover the best way how to learn Hindi.

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You may think that it is harder to figure out how to learn Hindi than it is to learn another, more familiar language.  English and Hindi don’t share a lot of vocabulary or grammar.  The languages are written in different alphabets.  Maybe Hindi just seems too “exotic” to you.  But learning Hindi is well within the realm of the possible.  After all, millions of Indian children speak, read and write Hindi!  If they can learn Hindi, you can, too.  Here are some tips for your success.  Here is how to learn Hindi.

First of all, start with a positive attitude.  Remember that old quote by Henry Ford?  “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.”  Have you ever heard anyone say that they just can’t learn languages?  When they think that, they make it true.  I want you to think that you can learn Hindi.  Then work hard at it.  Don’t let any perceived obstacles stop you.  You will succeed at your goal.

Break the project up into small tasks.  Don’t think about learning the whole alphabet in a single day.  Work on the first five letters.  Do you have a vocabulary list of fifteen words?  Work on the first half of it.  Go back for the rest later.  Understand that learning a language is a long process with successes coming every step of the way.  Value each of those steps and, one by one, they will take you to your goal of speaking fluently and easily.

Entertain yourself and impress your friends by using as much Hindi as you have learned.  Greet your friends in Hindi.  Write or say a few simple sentences, just for practice.  Then change the verb or the noun to prove to yourself that you can write or say even more than you thought. 

Use good time management skills.  It’s better to work a little on a new skill every day rather than it is to work for lengthy periods of time less often.  In fact, try to schedule two study periods a day.  In the first session, you learn new skills.  In the second session, you reinforce them.  Repeating material is a very important habit for how to learn Hindi.  That’s why your teachers used to give you homework.  You don’t want to progress too fast.  You want to make sure that you have learned each lesson thoroughly.  A short second daily study period will be helpful to you for that.

Reward yourself each time you reach a milestone.  When you have finished a lesson, rent a Bollywood movie.  When you have finished five lessons, treat yourself to a delicious meal in an Indian restaurant.   When you have finished the course, book your trip to India!

At the beginning of your Hindi course, it may seem that you will never finish.  You may think that you won’t ever be able to decipher the alphabet or understand the dialog that you hear in your audio files.  But you can do it.  Take the steps above and you will find that you know quite well how to learn Hindi.

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1. Shringar refers to love or attractiveness.  The associated color is light green and its deity is Vishnu.
   
2. Raudra refers to anger.  The color of anger is red and its deity is Rudra.
   
3. Hasya indicates laughter and its associated color is white while its presiding deity is Pramata.
   
4. Vibhatsaya is disgust and is represented by the color blue and the deity Shiva.
   
5. Veera refers to heroism and is associated with the color yellow and the deity Indra.
   
6. Karuna is compassion, which has a gray color.  Its associated deity is Yama.
   
7. Bhayanak is fear.  Fear wears the color black and is associated with the deity Kala.
   
8. Adubhuta is wonder and is represented by yellow and is associated with Brahma.
   
9. Shanta is peace or tranquility and its color is blue.  Like Shringar, shanta is associated with Vishnu.

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When you start your Hindi course, you will undoubtedly learn a lot about the language.  This article will give you a little background on the Hindi language.  It may help you to know these facts before you start your Hindi course.

Hindi evolved from the Prakrit language.  Because it is spoken in a place where there have been many travelers, explorers and colonizers, Hindi has been influenced by several other languages.

Hindi is spoken most in northern India, in the states of Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Bihar, Himchai Pradesh, and Jharkhand.  It is the secondary language of the  Andaman and Nicobar Islands.  Other languages spoken there include Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali, and Marathi.

Hindi is written in the Devanagari alphabet, the alphabet in which sacred Sanskrit texts were written in.  In fact the prefix “deva-” in the word “Devanagari” means sacred or divine.  Marathi and Nepali are also written in the same alphabet.

Hindi is a poetic and expressive language.  Although it may seem very unfamiliar to American eyes and ears, a diligent student can learn it.  Grammar is not complicated.  The language is written phonetically, so once you learn the alphabet, you won’t have trouble sounding out unfamiliar words or spelling words that you hear.

Hindi nouns have gender, but pronouns do not.  So, in Hindi, male humans and animals are described by a noun using the masculine gender.  Female humans and animals are described by a noun using the feminine gender.  And inanimate objects are described by nouns that have either the feminine or the masculine gender, according to the usage that the language has assigned it.

On the other hand, pronouns do not have gender.  Now, in English, the third person singular is “he,” “she” or “it.”  So a pronoun will indicate the gender of a human or animal.  But in Hindi, there is no version of the third person pronoun that would indicate gender.  Yet the verb does indicate gender. 

In Hindi, the verb is usually at the end, and a common sentence structure is subject – object -verb.  Hindi is a weakly inflected language, and the role of a noun in the sentence can be indicated by a postposition — that is, a word that may play the role of a preposition except that it follows, rather than precedes, a noun.

There are no articles, whether definite or indefinite.  Adjectives usually precede the noun.

Verbs have aspect as well as tense.  Tense indicates whether an action is past, present or future.  Aspect indicates whether an action is habitual, progressive or perfective.

So that’s a little bit about Hindi.  It’s just a short introduction.  You will undoubtedly encounter more as you progress in your Hindi course.

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